The eBay Box

"eBay just launched a new set of reusable boxes as part of a pilot program to make shipping a little greener. Starting in October, the company is giving away 100,000 shipping boxes to eBay sellers, and encouraging reuse. According to eBay, if each box gets used five times, the program could protect nearly 4,000 trees, save 2.4 million gallons of water, and conserve enough electricity to power 49 homes for a year."

"Designed by San Francisco-based Office, the boxes engage sellers by emphasizing potential benefits to the planet with friendly illustrations and copy. Tips for greener packing include finding "a new calling for old phone books." A happy little bird asks, "Where to next?" And to track each box's journey, there's space to write a note so the next person to receive it can see just how far its come.

Each eBay Box is made with 100 percent recycled content, printed with water-based inks, and designed to require minimal tape. And once it reaches the end of its useful shipping life, it's fully recyclable. From the box's fine print: "Don't worry, it will come back as something nice, like a birthday card or movie theater popcorn bag."

Trapezoidal Boxes

Nearly rectangular—but not quite. Trapezoidal boxes might seem like a pointlessly inefficient variation. They can be close-packed,
but only if they are stacked in an alternating, right-side-up /
up-side-down pattern. Which is maybe OK for shipping in some cases, but
unless the packages are designed for right-side-up / up-side-down
display—(See: Coffeine)—maybe not so useful for saving space on a store shelf.

Still, they make a remarkably dynamic impression. To the extent that
we’re accustomed to rectangular boxes, these packages create a near
optical illusion. Heroically photogenic, as if you’re looking up (or
down) at a tall building in perspective.

Puma and Yves Behar's new green packaging

After three years in the making, a new solution to the shoebox is announced- and it's pretty sleek too!

"It's hard to imagine something as simple as the shoebox being
completely overhauled. But Puma and Fuseproject have done just that, in
a design that will completely transform the brand's supply chain—saving
millions in electricity, fuel, and water.

"Rethinking the shoebox is an incredibly complex problem, and the
cost of cardboard and the printing waste are huge, given that 80M are
shipped from China each year," Béhar tells FastCompany.com. "Cargo
holds in the ships can reach temperatures of 110 degrees for weeks on
end, so packaging becomes an enormous problem. This solution protects
the shoes, and helps stores to stock them, while saving huge costs in
materials."

After spending 21 months studying box fabrication and shipping,
Fuseproject realized that any improvement to that already lean system
would merely be incremental. So instead, the "clever little bag"
combines the two packaging components of any shoe sale—the bag and the
box—with high-tech ingenuity.

The bag tightly wraps an interior cardboard scaffolding—giving it
shape and reducing cardboard use by 65%. Moreover, without that shiny
box exterior, there's no laminated cardboard (which interferes with
recycling). There's no tissue paper inside. And there's no throw-away
plastic bag. The bag itself is made of recycled PET, and it's
non-woven—woven fibers increase density and materials use—and stitched
with heat, so that it's less manufacturing intensive.

The impact: Puma estimates that the bag will slash water, energy,
and fuel consumption during manufacturing alone by 60%—in one year,
that comes to a savings of 8,500 tons of paper, 20 million mega joules
of electricity, 264,000 gallons of fuel, and 264 gallons of water.
Ditching the plastic bags will save 275 tones of plastic, and the
lighter shipping weight will save another 132,000 gallons of diesel.

The roll-out is planned for next year. After that? Hopefully, the design will become ubiquitous." via gizmodo.

House Industries for Herman Miller Japan

"This time a custom House Industries block set design commissioned by friends at Herman Miller Japan. I thought I’d try to roll all of my favorites into this one…Andy Warhol, Maria Montessori and, of course, the Herman Miller trifecta; Nelson, Eames and Girard."

The Dieline Awards 2011: Third Place- The eBay Green Box

Description: Office developed a new set of boxes for eBay, as part of a pilot program to make shipping a little greener. The company gave away 100,000 shipping boxes to eBay sellers, and is encouraging re-use. According to eBay, if each box gets used five times, the program could protect nearly 4,000 trees, save 2.4 million gallons of water, and conserve enough electricity to power 49 homes for a year.

P Around

"In 2010 a new brand and style of stationary was launched under the name P Around. P Around is inspired by the idea that ideas are all around us. The concept of the brand is to create functionality and beauty through the product’s intended use.

Take for example the intended use of an eraser is to erase; this functionality influenced the design of its packaging, the patterns on the packing are made by erasing material to create interesting graphics. This concept is repeated throughout the brand; the patterns on the A4 paper are designed to mimic folding a sheet of paper, the packing of pencils are decorated with drawings created with that weight of pencil."